Where Even Dreamers Fear to Tread
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: Harry walks himself into a troublesome but unavoidable situation without even knowing it. Harry/Snape slash


Author's Notes: Written pre-DH, so AU from the end of HBP. Contains some dark sort of themes.

* * *

Harry didn't think he'd ever been a sleepwalker in the past, but having often been locked away in small rooms and even cupboards when he slept, leaving him with nowhere to go, he couldn't really have been sure. It was kind of a moot point, however. Being found asleep but still on his feet two miles up the road from his small cottage by Ron, who'd been flying in for a visit, would seem to definitively prove that whether or not he'd always been one, he was certainly a sleepwalker now.

Three weeks later, Ron was sleeping on a mattress outside Harry's bedroom door so that he couldn't go for his nightly stroll.

"It's getting dangerous," Hermione had said, and Ron had nodded along with his soon-to-be wife. "There's no telling where you'll end up, and there are still Death Eaters at large!"

Harry knew that better than anyone. He'd devoted all of his waking hours to finding Snape so that the murderer could be brought to justice. He'd been put on the case because the new Head Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt, had noticed that he seemed to have an innate sense of where Snape was at any given moment. Unfortunately, he seemed to keep just missing the man. Perhaps Snape knew where _he_ was as well, Harry considered. It was more likely, however, that the man was simply cunning enough to have methods of tracking their progress in finding him. He had, after all, been a spy. Perhaps he'd commissioned the help of another person of that particular employ.

It wasn't Snape in particular that Hermione was worried about, though. In fact, Harry got the impression that she was more worried that he would put himself in danger by attempting to find Snape or one of his fellow Death Eaters rather than allow someone else track him down.

Harry figured, therefore, that at least half of the reason that Harry's two best friends had decided that Ron should play guard had very little to do with Harry's nightly excursions.

Perhaps Ron hadn't been the best choice, though, Harry reflected when he woke up lying on the side of a long deserted road that he didn't recognise. Ron had, after all, always been quite the heavy sleeper.

After four nights of this, Harry finally told Ron that he should go home and get some sleep in a real bed, since Harry could take care of himself. Both Ron and Hermione had stubbornly clung to the idea of protecting them until he finally rolled his eyes and allowed Hermione to put a trip-wire of sorts around his room each night, so that when he left the room, unless he was awake to deactivate the charm, it would track his movements and sound an alarm if he ventured into any area that Hermione marked on the relevant map in red ink as 'dangerous areas for Harry to go'.

Harry didn't have any major incidents until a month after the tracking spell was put into place. While he was putting himself into all kinds of danger, the tracking spell's alarm lay dormant and Hermione and Ron slept soundly through the night.

* * *

This was the last thing Severus Snape had been prepared for after a night of carefully-guarded covert meetings and planning with others who were on the run from the Ministry of Magic, just as he was, and those who sympathised with them and acted as their links to the outside world.

Harry Potter, Auror extraordinaire, walked calmly into his sitting room at five o'clock in the morning.

Snape drew his wand.

"Stay where you are and show your hands!" Snape demanded.

Potter, who hadn't stopped shuffling along, did no such thing. However, nor did he draw his wand. It was as if he didn't notice his self-proclaimed enemy standing right in front of him. Snape supposed that might have been because his eyes appeared to be closed.

"Potter?" he called. There was no response outside the muffled scrapes of Potter not lifting his feet enough as he continued making his way across the room in Snape's general direction.

"Damn it."

Snape wasn't really a suspicious man, but he'd heard all those stories about waking sleepwalkers too many times to just ignore them. He didn't mind if he damaged Potter in doing so, but he didn't want to take the chance that harm would come to himself as well.

"All right, then," Snape sighed, casting a Mobilicorpus Charm on Potter before his continuous shuffling steps ran him directly into Snape. He floated Potter out the door and down the road for a mile or so before dropping him onto the ground and petrifying him so he could not attempt a second visit. It would wear off in a few hours, Snape reasoned, and he didn't really care what happened to Potter anyway, since he'd gotten himself into his current predicament.

"Honestly," Snape muttered to himself as he walked back to his house, thinking about how quickly he could pack his things and get out now that his hiding place had been found, whether Potter remembered it or not. "Only Harry Potter could sleepwalk right into the lodgings of one of the most dangerous and wanted wizards in Britain and come out entirely unscathed."

* * *

Harry slapped a small piece of paper down on the desk in front of Hermione, which happened to be covered in papers that he imagined must be work that she'd brought home with her.

Hermione gave Harry a questioning look and picked up the paper, skimming over it. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh! Harry…"

"That's right; Snape found me last night and left me a nice little warning to read when I woke up. After, of course, I waited just about forever for the Full Body Bind to wear off. What a nice way to spend a morning, don't you think?"

"But you're obviously still alive," Hermione reasoned.

"Obviously," Harry returned, amused at her tone despite himself.

"So does that mean he isn't dangerous?"

Harry snorted incredulously. "Of course not. It just means that he's the same coward he's always been."

"What were the chances that you'd run into him?" Hermione breathed. "And the charm didn't go off, so it couldn't have been in a particular place."

Harry laughed humourlessly. "I probably followed him home somehow. I do seem to have made a living for myself by knowing where to find him."

Hermione got that considering look that had always preceded a trip to the library back when they were still in school. "That's right. You know, I really always thought that that was odd…"

"Hermione, this isn't Hogwarts!" Harry protested as Hermione shot up and paced quickly out of the room. "You can't just go look up obscure little references to back up your theories here. You can't possibly have enough books to find anything."

Hermione stuck her hand back through the door and gave Harry a wry smile. "Harry, really. You didn't think that I'd move into my own place and get a well paying job and not combine the overabundance of space and money into building up my own library, did you?"

Harry rolled his eyes as she disappeared again. "Of course not," he said, obviously to himself because there was no longer anyone else there to hear him. "What was I thinking?"

* * *

There was no word from Hermione for days. Nothing bad happened in that time, but Harry felt off. He felt itchy, as if something was going to happen, and he constantly wanted to be moving. The funny thing was that he felt like in doing so he would actually be going somewhere in particular. He just wished he knew where.

When Harry, sitting at his small kitchen table eating dinner, ended up with a wand tip poking almost painfully into his neck, he thought to himself that he really should have trusted that instinct that things weren't quite right. At least, he assumed it had been instinct.

"Stay very still, Potter, and I won't kill you."

"Fuck you, Snape," he spat at hearing his old teacher speak.

"No, Potter, I would venture that you are the one who presently seems to be 'fucked'," Snape countered smoothly. "I followed you back to your house after you visited me again in your sleep last night. I wanted to tell you that you should lock yourself up properly at night, because the next time you track me down and interrupt a very delicate potion I'm making, when I deposit you back on the side of the road, it will be so that the scavengers can sate themselves on you."

"That's… morbid," Harry said with a disgusted frown. "And gross. Did I mention gross?"

"Be that as it may, it is also true. Don't cross me, Potter."

"It's not really on my to-do list," Harry muttered, but the pressure on his neck was gone before he even got the sentence out. He spun around to find the room, and his whole house, empty but for himself despite the lack of that distinctive crack of Apparation.

Harry hadn't even seen Snape's face the whole time he'd been there. But Snape had seen Harry, and he obviously now knew where Harry lived. Harry decided he would have to watch himself more closely. It was time to visit Hermione again and give her a little nudge in the direction of the answer to his sleepwalking problem. He needed to get it solved as quickly as possible.

It occurred to Harry as he rifled around trying to find his pouch of Floo powder that the short period of time when Snape had been in the room with him had been the first time he'd felt normal in what felt like forever.

* * *

"It's not good news, then," Hermione concluded when Harry had finished his explanation. "That all fits with this spell I came across in one of my books last night. It's a 'protection and happiness' spell, but it's not really a normal sort of spell. It's old magic. Sacrifice magic."

"Like what my mother used when she died to save me?" Harry asked.

"Exactly like that," Hermione agreed. "I think that she invoked that spell. The effects vary, and the spell isn't used often enough anymore for there to be any recent information about it, but there have been reports of the spell helping its recipient to find happiness through helping them find someone they could spend their life with. Their soul mate, some would say, but really it's just someone who compliments them."

"And this spell thinks _Snape_ compliments me?" Harry scoffed.

Hermione bit her lip. "I don't know. But Harry, there's more. Those same reports talked about how once the spell locked onto a match for the person, it became increasingly more difficult for them to ignore its call for them to be together over time. If what's affecting you is this spell, you could be in trouble."

"Aren't I always?" Harry sighed.

* * *

"It's getting worse," Harry told Ron while Hermione used the bathroom before they sat down for dinner. "It's like a physical ache the further I am away from him. I can feel the exact _distance_, Ron. I can't take it for much longer."

"Gives you extra incentive to find and capture him, though," Ron said, looking on the bright side.

"Yeah, right. I don't think I'll be all that concerned with putting Dumbledore's murderer in Azkaban if I go mad because I'm not near him. And really, I can't believe that that's even a possibility. I should be going mad if I _am_ near Snape, not because I'm not. It's just not the normal way of things."

"Yeah," Ron agreed amiably. "But mate," he continued with a sudden grin, "when has anything that's ever happened to you been all that normal?"

Harry conceded the point.

The two young men stopped speaking when Hermione re-entered the room. Harry had made Ron promise not to tell Hermione that his condition was worsening, because she would want to do something about it. Harry didn't want that. He had to find the solution himself.

* * *

"Harry, you really oughtn't to have done that," Hermione admonished. She glanced anxiously into the other room.

Harry sighed. "There was no other way. Honestly. As if it's _easy_ to convince Snape that he should shack up with me because otherwise I'll be in debilitating pain my whole life, but he won't be at all affected because the spell's only on my end. He laughed at what little he knew. If I'd told him all that and tried to convince him to help me, he'd probably have laughed so hard he choked to death, and then where would I be?"

"But Harry, it's just not ethical."

"Nor is he," Harry shrugged, "so I guess it's fitting, isn't it? At least this way I'll be able to spend all the time I need to in his presence without us wanting to kill each other."

Hermione huffed, but whatever answer she was planning on shooting back was interrupted when Snape strolled into the room.

"Ah," Harry said with a bright, plastered-on smile. "You're awake."

Snape looked surprised for a moment, but then a strange sort of inquisitive smile that none of the others had ever expected to see the like of on _his_ face crept up onto his features.

"Who are you?"

Hermione sighed. "See? The poor man probably doesn't even know who _he_ is. It's just not fair to do that to a human being. And it's not very legal, either, come to that."

Ron merely laughed. "Oh, go on, Hermione, give it a rest. Oi," he said, addressing Snape, "do you feel like you've been treated cruelly? Been hard done by?"

Snape shook his head indecisively. "I don't think so. I'm not really certain."

Ron gave Hermione a big smile. "I didn't think so. See? He's never been happier."

Harry nodded. "Right. I did him a favour really."

"You did yourself a favour, you mean," Hermione said angrily. "Honestly, can't you see how wrong this is? And how selfish?"

Harry shrugged. "Well, I'm benefiting as well, yeah. But it's also the best thing for him, really. Think of what losing his memory did for Lockhart, and then times it by a thousand because Snape was a completely humourless and evil bastard who probably hated himself as he was – or should have if he didn't, anyway."

Hermione still looked like she wanted to argue the point, but she gave Snape a considering look and seemed to think better of it. Perhaps she was trying to protect Snape's feelings, now that he was more likely to be upset about what other people said about him than the man that had taught them at Hogwarts. She always had been fond of advocating for those she thought were in need, even when her help was unwanted.

Instead of upsetting Snape, she decided to get her point across to Harry silently by storming out of his cottage, dragging a protesting Ron along behind her.

Snape looked lost. "Who are you talking about?" he asked.

"No one," Harry replied, the lie coming easily. He put out his hand. "I'm Harry Potter."

Snape took his hand, but didn't seem to be able to figure out what he should say in response.

"And you're Severus Snape," Harry supplied. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Would you like to sit down? I can brew up a cuppa, and then we can have a bit of a talk."

Snape, seemingly pleased that the young man who called himself Harry Potter was being nice to him despite them never having met, was only too happy to agree. He didn't even appear to mind when Harry grasped his hand in order to lead him to the long chair that Harry referred to as a loveseat.

"Are we together?" Snape asked, frowning slightly down at their joined hands. "Sorry. I'm sure I've met you before, only I don't really remember where."

Harry only smiled.

~FIN~


End file.
